


i'm going your way

by wildcard_47



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 12:11:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5626117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildcard_47/pseuds/wildcard_47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every bit of information Lane had found on true Matches was unhelpful. It was all promotional rubbish, mostly stories of successful couples and their accompanying “tips” to finding yours. And that was before you factored in the truly heinous bits: the glossy ads broadcast all the way from children’s channels to late-night cable networks, the terrible reality programmes, the hopeful magazine articles, the newspaper editorials, or even the online algorithms destined to pluck your Match from obscurity and deliver them to you. All for a reasonable fortune, of course.</p><p>aka, my "Lane and Joan are marked as soulmates and don't know it" AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm going your way

_one_

 

Lane’s mark was small and pale, at the base of his wrist where the major tendons overlapped. It was not splashy or noticeable or bold against the crisscrosses of blue-green veins; rather, it was unassuming, and rather simple by comparison to the few others he’d seen—a waning half-moon that seemed to be tattooed in silvery-white ink, brightly outlined, and partially shaded, as if in permanent moonrise. Half the time, the damn thing could be hidden by the cuff of his shirtsleeve.

He always called it a vitligo spot. It wasn’t very special, really. It wasn’t some mystic demarcation of the future.

Not that he’d ever believed in any of that nonsense, anyway.

 

 

_two_

 

They’d forged the mark for their marriage certificate.

Lane had even helped her do it—they’d joked about it for hours, in the pleasant haze that had preceded their trip to the registrar.

 _Well,_ Becca had said briskly, the moment he’d opened the door. She’d held up her left arm in front of her for inspection, as if raising her hand to ask a question in the middle of class. As if he were about to measure her for a pair of custom gloves. _I’ve tried to mimic yours, but it’s gone a bit smudgy. You’ll have to do it over._ And so Lane had held her delicate wrist between his hands, humming to himself in a distracted way as he’d cleaned the silver ink from her skin, sketched the familiar shape and crosshatched the perfect shades for the hidden seas and valleys. _Moon river, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style, some day._ She’d joked about one day getting it done in earnest, perhaps for some big anniversary.

Her real mark was a jagged bolt pattern on the side of her right knee. She’d used pan makeup to hide it for their wedding, as if someone was going to yank up the hem of her voluminous ballgown and accuse them of fraud. As if covering it up made them truly meant to be.

No one ever said any of those words to them. No one asked questions. He and Becca simply joined the ranks of the Matched, making conversation about it at work and going to dinner and forming a family like all the rest. They passed the years together in a nice companionship.

Lane had never been under any illusions. Their marriage had never been blissful; it certainly had not been easy, but who were they, to demand false perfection instead of stability and partnership? Who were they, to constantly wish for something so stupid—so patently unattainable?

_Lane, you have no idea how difficult—how much I’ve wanted to—_

She had been crying, that night, tears falling from her lashes in thick drops—the first time he’d seen her cry in earnest since they’d lost the last baby. It was the first time she’d spoken to him in six days.

_What are you talking about?_

She’d met his gaze, and he’d felt a sudden, stomach-churning dread.

_I found him. I found my Match._

 

_three_

Every bit of information Lane had found on true Matches in the years since was unhelpful. It was all promotional rubbish, mostly stories of successful couples and their accompanying “tips” to finding yours. And that was before you factored in the truly heinous bits: the glossy ads broadcast all the way from children’s channels to late-night cable networks, the terrible reality programmes, the hopeful magazine articles, the newspaper editorials, or even the online algorithms destined to pluck your Match from obscurity and deliver them to you.

All for a reasonable fortune, of course.

Even the official website (MatchMarkers.gov), sponsored by the physician’s council, had fallen prey to the stupidest marketing ploys. It featured bright stock photographs of intertwined fingers and smiling mouths and neatly-arranged pairs of shoes or coffee cups or whatever else people deemed romantic. The home page quote loaded in a full-screen banner, the serifed font elegant against an oceanic background:

_It’s more than a Mark. It’s your biological Match._

The stories were all anecdotal. The feelings described were probably written by some money-hungry intern on a deadline, and were always vague and unmeasurable. Seeing them in print always put Lane in a sour mood.

_We felt it right away._

_A pull—a longing._

_Connection. Like nothing I’d ever had before._

_I didn’t even have to see her Mark. I just knew._

As if the Unmatched were miserable lepers, or emotionless fools who connected to no one; who were not meant for important milestones like marriage or children. As if one stupid birthmark held total sway over the way responsible people were meant to live their lives!

Joan Harris even caught him browsing around the site on a rather dreary day—his former anniversary—and raised a disdainful eyebrow once she saw the webpage, stacking the heavy folders she’d been carrying onto the left side of his desk. The gold bangle bracelets on her left wrist tinkled together as she set down her files.

“Oh, my god. Not you, too.”

He minimized the window at once. Although they’d come to a sort of truce in the years since they’d started working together, the undercurrent of irritation was always there, threatening to erupt into yet another fight. The first one had happened shortly after they’d met, and had very nearly passed into company legend.

He’d assumed she was a secretary and had tersely emailed her about completing his clerical work for two full days. After the final offense, she’d stormed into his office with a vase of red roses – where she’d got those, he had never known – and subsequently thrown the thing at his head. Her aim was so terrible the vase just shattered against the front of his desk. Water had gone everywhere, and a rosebud had hit him straight in the chest.

In the end, they’d shouted at each other for nearly five minutes before he’d realized his mistake—the shame hanging over him like an unwanted stormcloud—and for a week afterward, he’d smelled the roses’ dense, lingering perfume every time he’d walked through his doorway.

It made him dizzy. It made him furious.

“Whatever you want, I’m not in the mood,” was all he said now.

She sighed. “Being maudlin won’t solve anything.”

“For your information, I am _not_ being maudlin.” (He was.) “And I wouldn’t talk to you about it even if I were.”

She leveled him with an unamused look, and slid the folders in his direction. “Lane, I just brought over all the upcoming tax paperwork for my accounts. You could at least thank me.”

Oh. The only person who’d turned anything in, so far.

“Well—fine. Thank you. I’d invite you to stay,” he gestured carelessly toward the chair in front of his desk in an attempt to be cordial, “but I’m very busy.”

“Enjoy paying money to charlatans,” was all she said as she walked out.

The remark had actually made him laugh, and he’d started to repeat it to himself every few days, whenever he saw another terrible ad plastered along the walls of the subway. Two smiling faces usually looking adoringly at each other. The captions were always the worst sorts of puns.

_Found ‘em! Linked for life! Strike your match today. Make Your Match. Match Yourself. My match makes me ___________._

_Enjoy paying money to charlatans._

It really was funny.

 

_four_

Ken Cosgrove threw a small Match party a few weeks before he and Cynthia got married. As always, guests were able to mingle freely and bring whomever they wanted, or talk to whomever they liked, but it still held the frantic, fraught air of all the other formal parties Lane had been to in the past. Every so often, you’d get lucky and see two people chattering away in a corner, oblivious to the world. Lane never knew if that meant they had been officially settled or if they were just having a nice time together.

But normally, after the first hour, someone always got visibly disappointed that his or her Match had failed to arrive. The rest of the party was usually devoted to cheering up said person, or pretending you weren’t there to be Matched at all, and just talking to whomever you knew, making casual, inane conversation.

He downed another glass of punch in a single gulp, hoping with all his might that it was spiked. It had a pleasant sharpness to it that he rather enjoyed.

An amused voice behind him made Lane turn. “That good, huh?”

Mrs. Harris smiled at him as she reached for an empty glass.

“Well, it’s all right.” With a little jolt, he realized this meant she had actually deigned to attend Ken’s little party. She never went to any of them—not that she had to, being married. “Thought you’d have gone home by now.”

Her red lacquered nails tapped against the side of her half-full glass as she balanced it in both hands. “No. I promised Ken I’d stop by, at least.”

“Ah.” He put his empty glass aside with a couple of others at the end of the drinks table, and for a moment, they stood together in silence, and watched the bride and bridegroom-to-be. Ken and Cynthia were giggling over some shared joke with some members of the creative team. They couldn’t stop glancing at each other, exchanging casual touches and grins and barely noticing what anyone else was saying at all. Lane didn’t know whether to be embarrassed for or jealous of them. They were both very kind, and Ken was amiable to work with; two cheerful people who would have seemed to suit each other even if they didn’t share a Mark. The sorts of people you’d want to be deliriously happy.

For the millionth time, Lane wondered: were all true Matches deliriously happy? Was that even possible? Or did they all just happen to complement each other better than the rest?

“Wonder what it’s like,” Mrs. Harris said dryly, taking a sip of her punch.

He took a stab in the dark, trying to compensate for being so distracted. “What, working in creative?”

Her lips twitched a little, but she didn’t smile. “Being Matched.”

Lane’s heart dropped into his stomach. _Oh, my god._

“I—I thought you were already—” he struggled for the appropriate words, “I mean—you’re married.”

The look she threw him was practically acidic. “So were you.”

Lane was so embarrassed he could hardly look at her, and averted his gaze to the glass she now held with three fingers, not daring to talk right away. Although her usual lipstick was as red as ever, no printed smudge graced the lip of her cup. It was as flawless as when she’d picked it up, except for the smallest piece of pineapple flecking the rim, left over from the punch.

“Sorry,” he said first. What else could he do? “I didn’t—it’s not an insult.”

She let out a long breath. “I know.”

The silence fell over them again, heavier and more oppressive this time. Lane couldn’t stand still; he was practically sweating in his jacket and vest, and he felt overwhelmed with questions. They itched underneath his skin like a kind of virus. _Why had she gotten married, if she and her husband weren’t Matched? Why would she go through with it? People are less strict about it nowadays. She could have picked anyone. She didn’t have to worry that no one else would want her._

She wasn’t like him.

“Well. Least you’re happy,” he said quietly.

He wasn’t sure why he said that. It wasn’t as rude to address a couple’s lack of Marks aloud, not anymore. People were discussing it on talk shows or on the local news nearly every day. Most Unmatched people even took the questions in stride, now. Couples talked to their friends and families about how pleased they were to _have chosen each other_ , how nice it was to be out of the mindless rat race, or to have kept their parents from asking probing questions. He and Becca would probably have done the same thing, if that had been the fashion when they were young. If admitting defeat had been considered brave, back then, and not horribly pathetic.

Mrs. Harris was quiet. Lane glanced right; expecting her to say something funny in return, and instead saw that her expression had crumpled. Her mouth was taut, and her eyes were wet with unshed tears.

Quickly turning her face to the right, where he could not see it, she shoved her punch onto the table and made a beeline for the nearest office, just around the corner from the rest of the party. Lane followed in alarm.

“I’m fine,” was the first thing she choked out once the door had closed.

He scoffed. It was automatic; it was habit. He felt horrible about it the second the sound had left his mouth. “Clearly.”

Ten minutes later, they were screaming at each other again.

“For god’s sake, nobody cares about the reasons!” Lane shouted. “You’re not going on trial! If you’re so unhappy—”

“I am _not unhappy!_ ” Joan snarled, color rising in her cheeks. She took two steps forward, jabbing a shaking finger toward his chest. “You don’t get to tell me how I feel—you have no idea what I’ve—”

“Will you get your bloody hand out of my face?”

She stepped closer, pointing at him with every successive word. “Don’t you dare turn this into some kind of petty bullshit—”

His eyes flicked to where her red fingernails were clenched against the flesh of her left palm. Lane would never know why he had looked down in that moment, or what he’d expected to see, but one glimpse of the whitish shadow just underneath the curve of her wrist made his stomach turn.

His mouth ran dry. His throat felt like it was closing. All he could do was stare at that spot on her arm. It had to be a trick of the light. It couldn’t be real; it wasn’t her mark, but he had to see it in order to know that. He had to know for certain, and then he could stop himself from panicking.

_Why would it make him panic? Why should he care what it was?_

“Jesus! Are you even listening to me?”

“Joan—shut up,” he said roughly.

She growled out a furious noise. “Fuck you!”

“No, I didn’t—look, damn it!”

Lane couldn’t find the right words, and her hand was still poised in front of his face, and on impulse, he took her by the wrist, trying to show her what he meant.

She shrieked, and hit him in the middle of his chest with her other fist. As she rained blows along his shoulders and chest with her free hand, trying to pull her other arm out of his grasp, he finally found his voice, bellowing out the first few words that came to mind.

“Oh, for god’s sake, woman! Your wrist! Look at your bloody wrist!”

Joan stopped what she was doing, visibly panting for breath, and staring at him like she couldn’t possibly have heard that correctly.

_“What?”_

Lane ignored the pain in his stinging arms, pushed his jacket from his left shoulder, and yanked up his shirtsleeve with absolutely zero ceremony, baring the spot to her eyes. He thrust his arm out over hers so she could see them side-by-side, convinced that this would put everything to rights at last. They weren’t going to be the same. That would be that.

He glanced down.

_Oh, god._

The familiar moon-shape was clear and distinct from this angle. The same crescent mark threaded silvery-white through her pale translucent skin, identical down to the odd little squiggle of tiny veins in the bottom corner, near the crescent point. While his wrist featured two discolored freckles next to the mark’s roundest curve, hers had two tiny beauty marks of the same size, as if she’d drawn them on with dark pencil. They looked like little satellite moons.

She stared down at their crossed arms, not speaking, blue eyes bulging in clear surprise. Her entire face was flushed.

“They match,” Lane said stupidly, his mouth hanging open a little.

The words seemed to startle Joan out of her reverie. She pushed his arm away, clutching her marked wrist with her free hand.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?”

It was as if she’d poured cold water all over him. “What?”

Her voice trembled. “Because it’s _not funny—”_

“No,” Lane gasped. “Joan, I promise I’m not—”

“I’m going home.” Her face was as anguished as he’d ever seen it, and one arm was braced in the air as if she was trying to physically block him from the room. She wasn’t looking at him. “Don’t follow me. Don’t even _talk_ to me.”

Each word was more painful to hear than the last.

“But,” Lane stammered, close to panic, “but you can’t—”

“ _Shut up!_ ”

She stormed out of the room, and slammed the door behind her.

 

 

_five_

“Here’s the Q4 report.” Standing several feet from Lane’s desk, Mrs. Harris tossed two folders toward his inbox and turned on her heel to leave. But the papers missed their mark and fell right into the floor with a rustle of pages.

Lane’s heart felt like it might beat out of his chest. It was the first time he’d seen her in days. His throat caught just looking at her. “Joan, wait.”

“Don’t.” She didn’t turn around, but he could hear the strain in her voice. She didn’t walk away from him, either, which was significant progress.

“Please just talk to me,” he implored. “I can’t bear this—this silence.”

“Lane, I’m married.” Her voice was flat. She still wouldn’t turn to look at him. He wished he could see her face.

“I’m not asking you to—change that,” he said quickly, although his pulse sped up again at the thought of it. _Being together._ “But you saw it. You saw that we’re—”

Joan interrupted him, voice rushed. “They’re not the same.”

He scoffed again, which made her turn to glare daggers at him.

“They’re similar,” she said quietly. “They’re not _the same._ ”

“Fine,” Lane snapped, throwing his hands in the air with a huff of breath. “I suppose everyone’s just getting strange tattoos these days, all to mimic the Marks of the married people they hardly even know!”

“ _Lower your voice!_ ” Joan hissed, and walked out of the room.

“Oh, stop doing that, damn it!” Lane shouted after her, which earned him an askance look from Pete Campbell as he passed by the open doorway.

 

 

_six_

MatchedPartnerQuestions.com had a tenured advisor who answered reader inquiries on the first and fifteenth of every month. By the next deadline, Lane had gotten so anxious about the situation with Mrs. Harris that he’d actually submitted one. He’d created a new email address specifically for this task, and even masked his IP address by a proxy server. The email in question was written on a shared computer at his local library.

He wasn’t paranoid, thank you.

But you never knew what sorts of data people had on you, nowadays.

He’d also had to get a bit drunk in order to get up the courage to write in to the website at all. Which is probably why his question, when it was finally posted, sounded so wretched and brief when displayed on the screen. They’d probably had to edit out all the typos.

 _Q: What if my match doesn’t want me? What should I do?_ _–Submitted by Anonymous_

_A: Anon, when a Match finds each other, it’s not going to feel like the movies. It may not be love at first sight. Each partner may have feelings of excitement, or anxiety, or any number of other emotions about a potential relationship, as you may or may not have experienced with your Unmatched partners._

_Even if a Match’s initial reaction is ecstatic, I always tell my patients to take that with a grain of salt. Whatever you both feel at the prospect of a true Match should be discussed and treated just like any other issue that might arise in your future. Some Matches simply adapt to this sudden change more quickly than others._

_In time, if you communicate honestly, and are open about your own feelings, you should find these anxieties give way to a true Matched pairing. Don’t be discouraged! –Dr. Edna_

He kept repeating this to himself over and over _. Some adapt more quickly than others._ That was all it was. Joan—Mrs. Harris, he corrected—simply needed time to come around to the idea. He could give her time. He could do that.

As the weeks passed, this manifested as him sitting in his office, repeating his new mantra over and over, and trying to convince himself that everything was the same way that it had been before. Everything was fine.

_You don’t need to go and talk to her. You don’t need to go and talk to her._

He’d been telling himself this for minutes when he got the little urge that told him she was somewhere nearby. His office door opened, she stepped inside, and closed it behind her, taking a seat on the edge of his sofa.

“Hi,” was all he said.

“I need to sit in here,” she told him with no preamble, wide eyes skittering to his before darting immediately away. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap. “Just for a little while. I hope you’re not busy.”

Lane didn’t have to ask her why. He’d started visiting the upper floor at all hours of the day, just for the chance of a glimpse of her walking down the halls, or sitting in her office doing paperwork. She didn’t have to talk to him in order to quell this little feeling; he didn’t even need to talk to her, most of the time. He just needed to know that she was there, and that she was all right.

What he hadn’t realized was that she must have felt some version of this, too.

“Oh. Well, no, I’m not—that’s fine.”

She looked relieved. Almost smiled, even. It made the ache ease in his chest, like opening the oven and feeling a blast of warm, fragrant air roll over him.

“Erm. Since we can’t—obviously, we can’t prevent the, er, thing from happening, or else you’d have—erm—well, you could come and sit every day, or—every other—?”

“Weekdays,” she said immediately.

Lane felt his stomach soar. He was going to get to see her every day.

“Mm. That’s—I think that’s best. Although, I wonder—” Oh, god, why was he still talking? “If you’d like, we could have—tea, or something? So we don’t have to sit in silence with—well, with paperwork.”

Joan looked surprised that he’d suggested this, but on her face, the expression was vaguely amused. Like she should have thought of bringing food, as well. Lane wished very suddenly that he could make her laugh. Perhaps next time he’d try a little joke.

“Yes,” she said finally. “Tea would be fine.”

After she left, a few minutes later, Lane felt hollow and wrung out with relief. It had worked. He had given Mrs. Harris her space, and now they could work out some sort of beneficial arrangement.

It was going to be settled. It was going to be all right.

 

_seven_

What was intended to be a daily ten-minute sitdown with tea and biscuits had morphed into a complete half hour before work, starting promptly at eight o’clock on the dot. Lane didn’t understand how the time had lengthened without their knowing; one day, they were sitting together, exchanging tense smiles and a few stilted words between bites, and now, more often than not, they would talk for the whole thirty minutes without stopping—or more. His tea would get stone cold before he could take more than a couple of sips. And he didn’t care one whit.

“God. You know what Roger’s like at that point. We’ll get nothing decided.”

They were discussing a little business today—a meeting with Sunkist that happened to fall on a particular December morning. Pearl Harbor Day, to be exact. Roger’s father had served in the Pacific fleet, and Roger himself had served in the Navy, and so usually by nine o’clock on the fateful anniversary he was stone drunk and trying to chat up the nearest secretary with some godawful patter about _presidents_ and _interns_.

“I thought about rescheduling,” Joan said with a smirk, “but they’re booked through New Year’s, which is almost worse than having it fall on Pearl Harbor. If we see them on the seventh, at least it’ll be a short meeting.”

“Well, and how would you make excuses, anyway?” Lane grinned at her. “Terribly sorry, but our senior accounts man is six sheets to the wind that day, on account of paying homage to a grisly battle that none of us were in.”

Joan’s hand flew up to her face, and she touched the middle of her nose in a way that any usual person would have thought was her scratching an itch. But Lane had noticed the snort she had given before her hand had shielded her mouth.

She was laughing.

He kept going. A surge of adrenaline had thrummed to life in his veins, and he did a sort of quick-step, as if he were about to break out into a soft shoe routine. “Perhaps we should stage some kind of—elaborate tribute to distract them. Sets and warships and all the rest. It could be a—a musical revue.”

“Oh, my god.” She was laughing openly now, eyes shining with delight, and her fingers pressed to her open mouth.

Lane got to his feet, imitating the brisk soldier-pose he’d seen in many of the old movies: spine stiff, one arm pressed uncomfortably against his side, and the other cocked in a permanent salute. And suddenly he was half-speaking, half-singing something from a film he wasn’t even aware he remembered, pretending to march in time to a drummer’s beat.

“We’ll follow the old man wherever he wants to go! Long as he wants to go! Opposite to the foe!”

On the sofa, Joan was shrieking with laughter. Lane made his movements even more ridiculous, doing a few stiff-looking steps with high knees, and holding his chin up so far he could feel his glasses slide back toward the bridge of his nose.

“Anyway.” He suddenly felt self-conscious, and dropped the entire character, glancing back at Joan with an embarrassed expression. “Erm. I don’t know why I—just did that. Bit silly.”

“Wow.” The smile on her face was as wide and playful as he’d ever seen it, and he felt a shiver trip up his spine at the soft tone of her voice.

“Oh. Well.” He cleared his throat, ducking his head to hide the fact that he was blushing as he took his seat again. “You—you think it might work?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to see more of that routine.”

He laughed, feeling so thrilled he was practically dizzy. “Well. I, er, suppose everyone will be drunk on the day, or whatever, so it’s—never mind. We’ll just get back to work, hm?”

He thought he knew what people meant now when they said _it was a pull._ Sometimes, when Joan looked at him, he could feel a kind of connection pulsing behind her inquisitive glance— _come closer, come closer. Don’t be afraid._ He could feel it in the quick patter of his heartbeat every time he saw her, the way his fingertips itched to brush that stray piece of hair behind her ear or touch her hands or hold her face between his palms.

She sent him a little card the next day; put it into a file with some budget paperwork about Topaz. On the front was a vintage picture of two beautifully-coiffed women in red velvet Christmas dresses, trimmed with white fur. Inside, in her elegant handwriting, she’d written a single line—

_Wow: emprically defined as somewhere between ouch and boing!_

The last word underlined twice.

He put the card onto his desk straightaway, and stared at it for so long, lost in happy daydreaming, that he was ten minutes late to his next meeting.

 

 

_eight_

“Why did you get divorced?”

The question took Lane by surprise. He glanced left to gauge Joan’s expression, saw her staring out his office window, spinning her wedding rings around her third finger with a somber, thoughtful look.

_Oh._

They never mentioned her husband; rarely talked about him, in fact. He was deployed with his unit at the moment in some godforsaken island country, and that was all she had told him, at first. That was all he wanted to know, really.

“Well, it—wasn’t really my decision,” he told her, scratching at the back of his neck. “Erm. She—we knew we weren’t Matched, when we met. And you know what it was like back then. None of this—free to say yes or no business. Every lock had a key. Every person had his or her Match. And we were both practical sorts, eager to, well, to have our own family. So we, erm, pretended to be each other’s. I—I drew the mark on her wrist. And they never checked it, after the registrar visit, so we were allowed to marry.” He shrugged. “And that was that.”

Joan looked surprised. “You didn’t use hers?”

Traditionally, the bride’s mark was seen as the more favorable sign.

Lane shook his head. “It was on the side of her knee. Erm. A sort of—abstract lightning pattern. Harder to forge.”

In the old days, it was forbidden to tell strangers about another person’s Mark. This was rumored to weaken the bond between true Matched couples. Lane hadn’t believed that much even then, and he now thought it was complete poppycock, spread only so people couldn’t cause trouble within tight-knit communities. Because if your coworker or bartender or shopgirl said they knew someone with the same symbol as yours – whether that other person was free or not, interested or not – it was information that would have changed everything, at that time.

It still would, he thought.

Joan was silent for a long time, and when she met his eyes, she looked bone-tired, as if her next words were a burden she’d been carrying around for years.

“I’ve never seen Greg’s.”

Lane was so shocked he could hardly speak. “Does he not—have one?”

There were always rumors of Unmarkables. Genetically, it was supposed to be extremely rare, less than one percent of the population, but Lane had never met anyone that didn’t at least have a strange scar or a funny mole they could pass off as their god-given Mark. He had never heard of a person just…not having one, and admitting to that without reservations. Why would you be proud of that? Why would you keep it from your wife, if you had one? Who would do such a thing?

“I don’t know.” And Joan started to cry: deep, ugly sobs that contorted her face and tore from her throat in wild soundless yelps. She balled her hands together by her mouth, slumping forward, all her usual measured control just… gone.

Lane had never felt so small or so helpless in his life. All he could think of was the phrase he’d once read on some stupid compatibility site—something that had always struck him as gruesome and completely ridiculous, before. _When your Match partner experiences primal emotions like fear or pain, you may be able to feel shades of them, too._ With a stupid disclaimer at the bottom of the page. _Intensity of emotional bond may vary from pairing to pairing._

But in this moment, Lane knew the truth. It wasn’t gruesome, or invasive, or a running list of her thoughts inside his head. It was a kind of rippling clarity, like the resonance of a stringed instrument in the air after it had just been perfectly tuned. _He just felt it._ As if it were a natural part of the room, as simple as breathing.

Waves of roiling emotion poured over him in strange, undulating peaks—too many to name them all—each wave towering before it crested and broke, each one more sharp and overwhelming than the last. Anxiety. Despair. Anger. Shame.

He did not understand why Joan was in the grip of all of these things at once; had he done something wrong? Was this his fault? Had he upset her so much?

Had her husband done this to her?

Lane concentrated on staying as calm as possible, and put a tentative hand to her shoulder. She made a choked noise, covered her face with her palms, and leaned forward, resting her forehead on his knees as she cried, as if she couldn’t stand for him to see her like this. As if it were too embarrassing.

“Oh, Joan, no. I’m not—it’s all right.”

Seeing her so miserable was intolerable. The fear at the back of his neck was visceral and skin-crawling. He stroked Joan’s back with one hand and pressed his other palm gently against the crown of her head as they sat together, fervently wishing he could do more than offer comfort and watch her weep. He didn’t ever want her to feel so sad again. He was going to do anything in his power to make sure no one could ever do this to her again—even if it had been him.

Especially if it had been him.

“Lane,” she was whispering now, voice scratchy and rough, palms braced against his knees. She was sitting up, forcing him to move backwards. Her pale skin was damp, and blotched red around her eyes and nose; the color was starkly vivid against her wan complexion.

He felt dazed. How long had it been since she had stopped crying? How long since he had been touching her, comforting her in the way that she so clearly craved?

Lane’s mouth opened on its own accord. He was going to apologize. They were going to talk about it, and he was going to tell her not to worry.

“Can I—hold you?”

_What the hell was he doing? Why would he say such a thing?_

Her eyes filled again, but she just nodded mutely, and leaned forward, wrapping her arms around his back with a little broken sigh.

A sort of feverish relief washed over him at the contact. He buried his face into the side of her neck, and he felt Joan relax a little in his arms as she did the same to him, sniffling a little as she shifted in his embrace.

This was right. This was exactly what he’d been meant to do.

How did he know what to do? What was happening to them?

 

           

_nine_

On a windy Tuesday in February, Lane got a phone call from his father. He didn’t know why. They hadn’t spoken since the divorce. The connection was bad and static crackled through the reciever like sparks as the old man—cruelly, calmly—explained the reason he had phoned.

_As I’ve said before, you won’t get any of my money. And I expect you’ll do nothing with this news, as you always have._

_Then—then why did you—why bother with this? With any of this?_

_The old man’s laugh had turned into a rheumy, rattling cough that lasted for far too long, and when he spoke again, it gave Lane goosebumps._

_Because it makes me happy._

Lane spent the entire phone call feeling shaky and sick, and when they finally hung up, he had to put his head between his knees, he was so panicked; gasping for breath like a frightened child hiding from the monsters underneath his bed.

He spent ten minutes sitting on the floor behind his desk, staring soundlessly at the drawer handles, and then fled the building as fast as his trembling legs would take him. He wandered around the city in a numb, dispassionate daze, the old melancholy pulsing all around him, blue-purple like the bruises his father had once smashed into his skin. _You’re nothing. You’re nothing. You’re nothing._

That night, drunk with too much whiskey and queasy with fear, he dreamed of violence—of a dark-haired man in army green pinning a woman to the floor. Her face pushed into ugly beige carpet by one large palm as the man thrust into her. Blood staining her beautiful dress. Bruises on her stomach.

The instant Lane woke up, he leapt out of bed. He couldn’t even make it to the toilet before doubling over and retching up whatever bile was left in his stomach, gripping the edge of the sink for balance.

When he got to work—he had to go to work, he couldn’t just sit at home and stare at the walls—he could feel Joan’s presence brushing up against his, anxious and searching, even before he stepped into his office.

He opened the door and saw her standing by the window. Dark circles ringed her bloodshot eyes; she was very pale, and looked like she’d been pacing. Her fingers were twisted together in a nervous knot.

Once their gazes met, she rushed to him, throwing his briefcase down toward the wall and taking both of his hands in hers, kissing the knuckles of his fingers and clutching his wrists in a tight grasp.

“You’re hurt,” she kept saying over and over. “You’re hurt. I’m so sorry.”

Lane tried to speak, and found his voice shook. “Joan...”

_I’m fine._

“No, it’s not okay,” she insisted, almost choking on the words. “You’re not—I felt—” she bit her lip, her voice catching as she met his eyes again. “What can I do?”

 _Nothing,_ Lane wanted to say. He couldn’t talk about this; couldn’t admit to the terror and the panic and the dark void of endless misery that sometimes threatened to swallow him whole. It wouldn’t change the feeling even if he could.

_Do something. Anything._

_Because it makes me happy._

Oh, god. Oh, god.

“Here. Just breathe.” Joan’s hand was cupping the back of his neck, and she was pulling him down to her. Their foreheads were pressed together. Her free hand was on his chest, and standing in front of her, Lane squeezed his eyes closed and drew in breath after shuddering breath. The panic was still there, at the forefront of his mind, but he could also feel the tendrils of other, strange feelings wrapping around these thoughts, nudging them, questioning them with a kind of calm, wordless compassion that felt like simple curiosity. The mindless way you’d probe an old scab. Is it ready? Is it time?

_Can you move? Can you speak? Does it hurt here?_

“Sorry,” Lane choked out, horrified and humiliated and relieved. He was shaking all over. He couldn’t control it. He couldn’t say anything else.

The tendrils stopped their questioning, and instead turned into the kind of waves he recognized, the feelings that were uniquely Joan. They enveloped him like the pull of a strong river current, each section of the water traveling at many different speeds, offering to guide him through churning rapids and calm shallows and running quick and vast and steady all at once.

“That’s it,” was all Joan said, continuing to breathe deeply. He could feel her breath on his face when she exhaled; the way she was focused so intently on steering him towards true north and away from the miasma of fear that still gripped him. He could not have been more grateful. He did not think he could find that place without her. “That’s better. Just breathe.”

 

 

They had almost managed to sort out their daily routine, now.

An hour of time spent together before work; talking or drinking tea or going over some papers—but usually sitting side by side, now, her hand on his arm or his knee brushing against hers every few seconds. From a distance, Lane had finally begun to parse some of the complex ranges of emotions he could feel from Joan on any given workday. The little spikes and ebbs of temper and triumph that he’d come to recognize as normal—or at least, that had stopped alarming him at inopportune times. Meetings were sometimes more difficult, but bearable.

What completely did him in were the nights. Evenings alone with a dish of leftovers, or lying restless in bed in the darkest hours, staring up at the ceiling, wishing he could talk to her. Wishing she was with him.

Or, even worse, he’d have the dreams. Occasionally, he’d get strange images or flashes—memories he’d never experienced, or people and places he’d never seen—but for the most part, they were all…

Well. They consumed him.

_Joan with her head thrown back against his pillows, red hair spilling across the sheets as her back arched and her body shook. Lane’s hands on her breasts and his mouth buried between her soft thighs, suckling her, tasting her._

_On his sofa with his hand up her bright-colored work dress, nimble fingers sliding into hot slickness, Joan shuddering as she pitched forward in his lap, her hair rubbing against his jaw, her hands clutching at the sleeves of his coat. “J—just like—”_

_A moment so fast they hadn’t even taken off their clothes, Joan shoving him down onto his desk chair, fumbling at his belt and zipper and shoving her knickers to the side until he filled her, until she was rocking and clenching around him, gasping out one word._ More.

During one particularly sleepless night, he’d actually pulled out his laptop to look up potential explanations, feeling nervous and awkward as he typed the search terms into a private Google window ( _sex dreams biological match_ ), and clicked on the first result he saw—another self-help site. Four thousand pages of comments in the thread titled “Matched In The Bedroom?”

He clicked on the last page.

_23:15 @merMAn269 so has any1 else had the mad wet dreams about their m@ch ;-) i can’t fukkin concentr8 im so hard alll the time_

_23:15 @gowninggal yes. so intense! (and i’m a girl!)_

_23:15 @m0ulin @gowninggal cn women even get those_

_23:16 @shipz_to_shorez .@merMAn269 i mean they last 4 a couple of weeks maybe, i don’t get why it goes away but it does enjoy it while it lasts dude_

_23:18 @0158nhg im obsesssed w mine—best jerk i ever ahd_

_23:19 @disdensity oen time I made my match come just by thinking about sex_

23:20 _@mrskobebryantIII oooh spill @disdensity did u really I dnt think that was possible_

23:20 _@disdensity .@mrskobebryantIII yah it totally is, we’re a level 4 match so when i get really excited DM **knows** and that day was the hottest ever. he was home &i felt him walking around but was kinda distracted obvs and all of a sudden he was on the kitchen floor just moaning and i hadn’t even touched him __J_ _J we laugh about it now but it was real weird that first couple minutes ofc_

_23:21 @mrskobebryantIII damn @disdensity get that ass. bet ur DM luvd it! cn u imagine how the fives must get, id’ die of embarrassment probly. my best friend’s got a second cousin whos a five he told her it’s unreal_

_23:22 @damnitlewis @disdensity ur a cunt_

Lane shoved his laptop closed and tossed it into the chair next to his bed, pressing his palms to his eyes with a groan of frustration. That—that couldn’t be real. The ridiculous levels and the obsessions and the—that kind of intensity. People were just spreading rumors, and that was the end of it.

 

 

One day during a late lunch, Joan put a hand on his leg as they were teasing each other. He didn’t know why; he’d made some stupid remark about an upcoming conference. It was silly; it was mindless, but the second her hand touched him he had shivered all over. And he’d tried to keep from letting on how much he liked it—she was still married, she didn’t want to go to bed with him—but she’d clearly noticed something was off. He’d seen the shadow of discomfort in her face. He’d felt the little tendril of awkwardness. _Are you okay?_

And once she’d gone, he’d taken a very deep breath and settled back onto the couch, covering his face with his hands. He wasn’t going to be able to do anything about this until he got home, but he couldn’t think about work, not when his mind intoxicated him this way. His entire body throbbed with need, and if he concentrated he could even increase the sharp pulse between his legs, feeling the little wonderful edge of discomfort that accompanied it.

Oh, sod it all. He’d just let his mind wander for a few minutes.

_Joan with her back against the wall, pressed against his chest as he held her up, moving fast and fierce until her hands scrabbled at the wallpaper, until she was sucking in great gasps of air as she came, him not far behind._

_In bed together. Joan on top. Him on top._

_He’d use his mouth, his fingers, his cock, his whole body. He’d touch every bit of her until she was writhing and panting in pleasure, face flushed pink and lips kiss-bitten red, the red of her beautiful lipstick._

_He’d lick her all over, from tits to toes, suck soft taut nipples into his mouth until she gripped his hair with both hands, tugging at it until she fell apart under him._

_He’d have her slowly—so very slowly—long languid thrusts until she was poised and quivering on the edge, begging him, commanding him._

_God, yes, god, yes, don’t stop!_

_Oh, she’d cry out and shake and shiver when he made her come a second time, still sensitive from the first one, but he’d circle her clit with knowing fingers, then brush his hand lower until she was practically climbing his wrist, feeling her muscles cinch around him, knowing how she’d like it. Gentle, gentle, so light and nice, rubbing against that spot with the pads of his fingers until—_

_Ah! Jesus—f—ah!_

_Lacy knickers soaked clean through, he’d toss the scrap of fabric onto his floor before kissing down the fine trail of hair on her belly, short curls soft against his mouth as he moved lower, sucked her clit into his mouth and—_

_STOP!_

He opened his eyes, confused. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

Without warning, the door to his office burst open and Joan staggered in, slamming it behind her and bolting it closed. He had never seen her like this. She looked consumptive; a high flush had risen in her cheeks, her eyes were glassy and unfocused, and her clothes were oddly wrinkled and disheveled. The underarms of her dress were damp with sweat, and her face and arms were noticeably dewy.

Lane bolted upright in a panic, trying to cover himself despite being fully clothed, not knowing what to do or where to look.

“What—” he began.

“Please, you have to—stop,” she panted before he could finish the sentence, red lipstick a little smeared at the corner of her mouth. She looked strung out, but he felt the pulse of waves that told him she was furious, if exhausted. “You’re driving me crazy! H-how are you doing this?”

“I’m—” and the penny dropped. He turned purple. “Oh, god, _tell me you didn’t._ ”

He couldn’t have been—she couldn’t have possibly—

“ _Yeah_ ,” she hissed, bending down and throwing her shoes aside with a distracted hand. One pump hit the baseboard by the credenza and left a black mark on the wood. “Do you know how hard it is to hold yourself together in the middle of a goddamn traffic meeting, when somebody else is imagining _a goddamn X-rated movie inside their head?_ ”

“I missed—the meeting?” he said stupidly. She tossed her other shoe in his direction with a growl of fury.

_“You made me come in front of six of my coworkers! Twice!”_

Oh, god, oh, god, oh my god. “Joan—I—“

_“I had to pretend I was swooning!”_

“Oh, god,” Lane was too horrified to say anything else. “I’m sorry!”

She fixed him with a poisonous glare, slumping down on the end of the sofa. “Are you? Because I ended up on my back in my office for _forty more minutes_ because of your little filthy fantasies! I thought Bridget was going to walk in and find me humping the goddamn floor!”

“F-forty—?”

“Oh, and in case you can’t tell from all of this, I felt _everything, Lane_.” Her blue eyes were wide and dark; the pupils so dilated it made her seem otherworldly. “Every lick, every bite, every little. Teasing. Thrust. And I am _not_ quiet in bed.”

Her hard stare traveled down from his face to his zipper.

Lane gulped. He felt his cock twitch, and tried desperately to ignore it.

“Joan.” He licked his lips, trying to force air into his cinched lungs. “I—”

“Shut up!”

He did.

She was still staring at him, this time with a dark, intent expression he could not entirely parse. “You are going to pay big time for this.”

And suddenly he was so close to the edge he was trembling, spasming hands clutching at the cushions underneath him, making this rasping needy whimpering sound. All he could feel was hot wet tightness on his cock and all he could see was her on top of him.

Was he imagining it? Was she? Did it matter?

“Oh, god, Joan,” he moaned, too excited to keep his eyes open, although it did nothing to hide the obscene picture in his head. “Joan, I’m going to—”

“Oh, yes, you are,” she answered— _growled it_ —and he felt himself spurt all over his pants, oh god, oh yes, he’d needed that, he’d needed that—

And without warning, without even a second to recover, he was hard again, like he hadn’t been since he was sixteen and away at school, and spent hours in the prefect’s bath in the middle of the night.

The vision was different this time. He was in a sleigh bed with floral-patterned sheets, stripped completely naked, and in front of him was Joan wearing her knickers and nothing else, smirking, her knees on either side of his hips.

“I’m going to make you pop,” she told him in a matter-of-fact way, voice rich and dark and her mischievous smile widening. And she shimmied down the bed, took his hips in her hands, and put her mouth on him. Lane almost came at the first swipe of her tongue swirling over his head; he felt himself beading up too soon, oh god, he can’t come yet, he can’t c—oh, _god_ —wait please now yes—

She was straddling him this time, but he wasn’t even inside her yet; slick soft flesh was pressed against the head of his cock, and it felt so lovely. Every time Joan moved her hips, the motion made him twitch—and all she did was move her hips, slow circles at first, grinding down into him until he groaned for more, then rubbing against the tip of him, hot and fast, the sensation all-consuming until he came all over his stomach, watching as she rubbed herself against him in abandon, closing her eyes in pure pleasure as she rocked back and forth, back and forth…

“Lane.”

Her voice was singsong—melodic. His eyes flew open.

Joan was still sitting at the end of the sofa, watching him with a little smirk on her face, and he was a total sodding mess, sticky and sweating and still hard and completely bloody breathless.

“Oh. Oh.” He wrenched his head up to look at her in disbelief. “D-did you—have you even—”

Waving a vague arm toward her hands, which were folded primly on top of her bent knee.

“Just my imagination,” she said archly, tapping her temple with an index finger. Her lips twitched into a smile.

“Dear god.” He sagged back into the cushions, totally and completely stunned. They stared at each other for several long seconds.

“We should go home,” she said finally, giving him a significant look.

Lane could hardly peel himself up from the sofa—although her use of the words _home_ and _we_ were as good a reason as any to try. He had to stifle the nervous giggle that kept threatening to bubble up past his lips. “Erm. You’ll—give me a minute, won’t you?”

“Sixty seconds,” she said, reaching out her hand, paired with a halfhearted glare that told him this wasn’t over at all. “Come on.”

 

 

_ten_

Another story that nearly passed into company legend (not theirs):

The knock sounded on the hotel door again, more urgent this time. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Lane gave Joan an affectionate glance; she poked him in the side with one foot. _Your turn._ He got to his feet, found no clothes except her blue silk robe among the detritus on the ground, and decided he might as well put this on. It fit about as well as could be expected, but at least it wasn’t completely obscene.

When Lane opened the door, the bellboy’s eyes widened, he reddened all the way from his neck to the tips of his ears, and he opened and closed his mouth very quickly. “Um. H-hello.”

“Yes, can I help you?” Lane asked, raising an amused eyebrow. The lad looked like he was barely out of puberty at best.

From the bed, Joan snickered loudly.

“Uh. Yes, sir.” The boy’s voice squeaked over the next words. “We’ve had some—um—n-noise complaints about this room, a-and so I was—well, what I’m supposed to, um, tell you—”

“Keep it down, I suppose,” Lane said mildly.

The lad blushed. “Um. Yeah.”

“Right. And do you know which room complained?”

“Um—um—we’re really not supposed to—” the young man swallowed, and glanced to his right. “I don’t know.”

Lane hid a smile. “They’re on this floor, I suppose.” He thought for a moment, and arrived at a possible solution to this problem. He’d seen someone use this on a plane, once.

“How much for a bottle of champagne? To the people who felt bothered?”

“You’re buying champagne?” Joan called to him from the bed. Lane smirked.

“Yes, dear. Would you like any?”

The lad was staring at Lane like he had no idea how any of this was possible. “Sir, it’s—I don’t think you’d want to—it’s for six rooms.”

“Hotel markup, Lane!” Joan reminded him loudly.

Lane bit back a laugh. “Yes, thank you, darling.” He turned back to the bellboy. “Well?”

The boy blinked at him, clearly stunned. “Um. Okay, we’ve—the cheapest bottle is, uh, twenty—”

He bit off the end of his sentence, voice breaking again. Lane glanced down the small hallway behind him and saw Joan walking around the foot of the bed, wearing a bedsheet around her as if it were a formal ballgown.

“How much for six sets of earplugs instead?” She picked up the television remote and gave them a bemused look before walking back around the bed and disappearing from view.

Lane held up a hand before the boy could take this playful question seriously. “Anyway. We’ll—just—charge the bottles to the room, then. And get one for us, as well. I think that would be all right.”

“You think,” Joan echoed flatly, but the tone of her voice was accompanied by a pleasant tickling feeling that spread from his stomach into his arms and legs. She was teasing him. He loved that.

“Sir, but that’s—”

“As I said, I think it will be all right,” Lane said again, and began to push the door closed. The lad was out of the doorway and standing inside the hall within a few seconds. Lane made a satisfied noise as he latched the lock, turned on his heel, and walked back into the bedroom.

It was an absolute disaster. Suitcases were askew, clothes and blankets were everywhere, and there were cartons of leftover Chinese on the floor in one corner, but Joan was lying naked on the bed, watching some horrible redecorating program, and so it felt like the nicest room in the world to him. On screen, a Matched man and woman were in the middle of flipping their house. They’d only gotten to the bit of the show where all the rooms were showered in plaster dust and everyone cried at the drop of a hat. _If he was r-really my Match he’d understand why this b-bathroom needs a claw foot tuh-uh-ub!_

“Nice ordering.” Joan’s smirk was enormous.

“Shush.” He shed her robe, and hopped back up onto the bed, one hand sliding playfully up the top of her thigh. She batted his fingers away, not unkindly, and nudged him with a little impatient tendril of emotion that said _wait ten minutes, idiot._

“Let me see how this ends.”

“Well, they’ll never make their money back if they put it all into the finishings,” was all he said, leaning back into the pillows with a huff of breath.

 

           

_Normally, Match fever wears off within eight to twelve weeks of your first moment of true intimacy. You’ll feel that some parts of your connection have mellowed and deepened, while other aspects of your pairing will be as constant as ever._

Eight weeks after the first time they’d made love, while Lane could (finally) daydream about seeing Joan in the nude without causing her acute distress, most of the other aspects of their pairing were as intense as ever. They could sit up talking for hours at a time—over serious topics, like their parents or past heartbreaks, or over something as stupid as their top five favorite films. The usual flashes of emotion were present, clueing him into her general state of mind, and then there were the very focused and specific flashes, which occurred a little less frequently. Like the shared dreams. Or the incredible sex.

Oh, when she took the lead with the incredible sex.

He was still smirking to himself about that as he walked into the conference room for the 4pm meeting. Inside, Stan was fussing over the projector, with Ginsberg at the laptop.

“Ginzo, just open the browser, for god’s sake.”

“Fuck the browser! You said you’d make me a good PowerPoint!”

“Uh, you also said you could _use_ PowerPoint,” Stan told Ginsberg with a snort, giving Lane a nod hello as he sat down. “Which was a lie. So click the damn icon already.”

“Would you cut it out, talking to me like I’m an idiot? You’re being a dick!”

Ignoring their bickering, Lane put his ledger onto the table, then his clipboard and notepad on top of this, and then dug the chocolate granola bar out of his pocket, placing this at the head of the table for Joan. He’d thought she seemed very irritated after lunch, and angry with a lot of people, so perhaps she hadn’t gotten any food. She got very angry when she was hungry. He did not know why, and wasn’t about to ask.

Joan raised an eyebrow when she arrived and saw the granola bar sitting on the table. “What is this?”

Lane pretended not to have noticed it. “Food, I suspect.” He felt warm amusement curling up against him in a way that meant she was pleasantly surprised, but her mouth barely twitched.

“And why is it here?”

He feigned ignorance again, but sent her a little funny feeling back; one that she had told him was similar to taking the first sip of tea on a cold morning.

“Hm.” She unwrapped the top of it, and bit into a corner. “Well, it’s not bad.”

Meaning she had needed that.

Twenty minutes later, they were watching Ginsberg struggle his way through his branding presentation, Peggy trying to give him clues in the dark using some kind of complex hand signals that Ginsberg clearly couldn’t understand, and Stan just scrawling large words onto a notepad with Sharpie and holding this up toward Ginsberg, who kept waving it away. Ken and Pete were ignoring the presentation altogether, having a quiet, prolonged conversation about some possible accounts emergency.

At one point, Lane met Joan’s eyes across the table, winking surreptitiously at her before turning back to the screen at the front of the room.

He felt her nudge him, wordless, curious, and after a moment, he felt the rush in his stomach that meant she was sending him a very specific flash.

Next thing he knew, it was as if he was sitting on the sofa in his office, and they were alone together, Joan kneeling between his splayed knees, and her soft manicured hands slowly unlooping his belt.

_Remember when I said a little payback was in order?_

Lane’s eyes flew open. Across the conference room table, Pete and Ken were still muttering to each other. Ken was writing something down on a scrap of paper. Lane averted his eyes in a panic, not wanting to see either of them while he was like this—while she was doing this. _Oh, my god._

Joan sent him another flash, more explicit this time: his hands tangled in her hair, her mouth taking him all the way in, head bobbing up and down at a pace that meant she was trying to—oh, oh, oh—she felt _so good_ —Lane set his jaw to keep from making any noise, his hands digging into the armrests of his chair.

_Don’t come. Don’t come. Don’t—_

The sensations stopped as quickly as they had begun.

Lane’s legs were shaking. He was hot and very hard and trying to keep his shallow breathing under control, hands still white knuckling the armrest—hoping against hope that he didn’t look completely deranged.

And somehow Ginsberg was _still_ sputtering on, fumbling and dropping the remote with a loud curse. Inwardly, Lane pleaded that Joan would at least end this infernal torture before the lights came back up.

A curious tendril again, followed by another flash.

Joan back on her knees, glancing up at him with a devious grin, her lipstick smeared and one brow cocked in a suggestive way. Her hand was drifting down his stomach and towards his open trousers.

“Think you can keep quiet?”

He swallowed, and nodded. _Please._

“Dude,” said Stan, once the lights came back up, and the meeting ended. He did a double-take as he glanced over at Lane, who had the ledger and his clipboard over his lap, and was now dabbing at his damp forehead with his handkerchief. Ginsberg was unplugging cables from the wall, not talking to anyone, clearly disspirited. “You feeling sick or something?”

Peggy wrinkled her nose at Lane as she exited the room, meaning she probably thought he had some horrible flu and was going to give it to everyone.

“Erm.” Lane tugged at his collar. “Bad, er, clam.”

A sudden wink of amusement, like seeing a bright light reflected in a mirror.

Stan made a sympathetic face. “Yikes.”

“Maybe you should go home, go to bed,” Joan said innocently, and Lane fixed her with a glare that said she had done quite enough already.

“I shall take it under advisement.”

           

 

A week later, the two of them were walking to a midday meeting together, after a pleasant lunch out of the office, for once.

“Hiya, Joanie,” Roger sidled up to them as they turned a corner. He was as ebullient as ever, Lane noticed. Or perhaps he was already drunk? “When’s that husband of yours back in the states?”

 _No._ A rush of cold fear settled in Lane’s stomach, and he had to stop himself from blurting out something very stupid. Y _ou’re mine and I’m yours._

The alarmed tendril Joan sent in response said that she had felt what Lane hadn’t said aloud, but to all eyes, her response seemed as brisk as usual.

“Next month.”

“Oh yeah? Bet you’re excited.”

“Well, it certainly passed quickly.”

Sometimes Lane could not hear the real truth in Joan’s voice, even when she spoke to him; he could only feel it in his gut. It made him anxious. It put him on edge, especially when it came to talking (or not talking) about Greg.

“All right. See you at the next kickoff.” Roger finally turned his attention from Joan and grinned at Lane in the adolescent way Lane had always hated, as they finally arrived at the conference room door. “Lane. Clipboard.”

It put Lane in a sour mood. It also led to another fight, this time in some empty office down the hall that no one ever used.

Joan kept trying to send him these very purposefully calm feelings; it was driving him up the wall. “Lane, will you just listen to me, for once?”

“Stop it!” Lane snapped, and felt the false calmness immediately dissipate from the air around him. “You can’t simply—lull me into agreement whenever you want! And you cannot expect me to pretend that nothing’s happened between us—”

A flash of fury. “No one’s asking you to!”

“For god’s sake, Joan, you’re the one doing it! You say you care about me, but you’re still married to him!”

She was staring at him like he had missed something very important, her eyes flinty and determined. “You know why.” She took a deep breath. “You know what this relationship means to me. Yours and mine.”

“No, I don’t!” Lane started pacing again. “All I know is that you’re still married, and you won’t tell me the bloody reason, and I just—don’t you want me?”

_You’re my Match, and I love you, and I don’t want to be without you._

It was poised on the tip of his tongue. He could not say it out loud. His heart sped up as he felt one of Joan’s tendrils reaching out; clearly wanting to know what he was thinking, even if it didn’t say as much. He tried to pretend he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t tell her.

_What if she doesn’t choose me?_

The hurt on her face was crushing. Lane cursed himself for being such a coward. “I just—I need time. I have to think.”

“What?”

He was bolting for the door, already knowing that it was a terrible mistake. _Don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave_

Each step away from Joan brought the feeling into sharper focus. _Please stay._ The door squealed angrily as it swung open behind him.

Joan called after him, but did not follow.

 

 

They were in bed together a couple of nights later. Joan was so restless he could feel it; this had woken him up from a sound sleep, first, and then it had made him very worried. But they hadn’t said a word yet; just lay there very quietly until she finally cleared her throat.

“Lane, I have to say something.”

This was accompanied by a kind of phantom fluttering in his chest that he recognized as her heartbeat, quick and anxious. Oh, god. Lane shut his eyes.

“It’s not bad news,” she said quickly, and grabbed for his hand beneath the flimsy sheets. He concentrated on the brush of her fingers against his, instead of their rapid heartbeats, and on keeping his feelings steady, although inside he was panicking.

“But you feel so nervous,” he blurted out first.

She sighed. “I know.”

They lay there together, Lane with his eyes closed, and Joan in her _churning-whitewater-rapids_ restlessness, until she finally spoke.

“I filed for divorce.”

The words lodged in his throat like a lump of tears, although he did not cry. Oh, god. She’d actually done it. She’d gone through with it.

“When?” he croaked out.

“Last month.” Her grip on his hand was so tight. Her words were clipped. “He could still contest it.”

Lane was still drowning in relief. Divorcing. Choosing him. He could hardly think, but her fluttering nervousness had not abated, and so his next question was unvoiced. He hoped it was clear enough to understand. _How?_

“I don’t even know if he’s gotten the petition,” she continued, glancing over at him as if she were trying to answer as best she could. “But I—he might not let me go. He’s not a good man.”

 _You know why,_ Lane thought suddenly, remembering her words from the other day, but not understanding what he would have seen, or when. What was starting to worry him was the way she’d just closed herself off; he could feel the invisible boundary snapped tight between them, tense and vibrating, instead of the usual thicket of cheerful vines and scrub brush that tended to separate their emotions—Joan always called it _beachfront property._ He thought it was more like a wooded path you’d always known but hadn’t walked in years, and suddenly recognized as you were walking toward a bright clearing.

“I know that you always seemed—torn,” he offered, trying to put this into the best words, and sent her a little feeling that told her he was listening.

The only response he got was a wave of sadness—like being trapped in the rain on a freezing day, unable to do anything as the water poured onto him in sheets, running into his eyes and nose and mouth as his hands and feet grew numb. He shifted position, turning over on his side and using Joan’s clasped hand to roll her the same way, so they were lying closer together, with his arm slung over her hip.

She took a long time to speak.

“The first flash,” she said quietly. Lane wasn’t sure what kind of feeling he sent her this time. All he could picture was the two of them standing in his office, eyes closed and foreheads pressed together, but she just shook her head.

“Before that.”

The next picture in his head was one he did not know how to voice—one he could not bring himself to examine too closely. A throwaway detail had suddenly clarified and risen to the surface of his mind, one he had never understood, one he thought he had forgotten: _army green._

Her answering flash nearly choked him with its intensity; it was not a vision. He could see nothing but darkness; it was an overwhelming sensation of _suffocation, pain, horror, being pinned—trapped_ —and as if from a far-off distance, he could hear someone grunting. A man.

The boundary snapped up again as before—silver and taut like a downed power wire—and the flash stopped. For the first time, Lane understood its true purpose. He still feared this one, yes, but not because of its new form. Because it was powerful—dangerous—the fear had purpose. We must be careful here.

She was protecting him. She was protecting herself.

Lane let out a ragged breath, and dropped a sort-of kiss into the side of Joan’s hair, feeling her back expanding against his chest as she tried to breathe, his hand still clutching hers. She was crying. So was he.

“I didn’t w-want to upset you,” was all she said aloud.

He couldn’t speak, couldn’t say anything that would fix what had happened, and so he sent her the most powerful feeling he could muster in response. It was not calm, it probably wasn’t reassuring, but it was _righteous_ — _awed_ — _wild. I’m so sorry._

It reminded him of a bonfire blooming to life, thick dark smoke billowing from the top as it began to turn all the weeds and kindling and rotten driftwood to ash. Orange flames licking and crackling toward the sky as they grew into a towering blaze, warming every part of the starry clearing with their uncontained heat, a heat she could touch and observe, even from a great distance. He wanted to call out to her. Follow the smoke; you can sense it in the air. Watch for the light; you will always see it blinking. Reach out for the heat; it will warm you on the coldest night. It will change and grow and keep you safe and never burn out. In the distance, somewhere beyond the fire, he could hear the gentle rushing of the tide.

 _Feel it._ _See it._

_I’m here with you._

 

 

_epilogue_

Ken was staring up at Joan in obvious confusion, glancing from the torn wrapping paper and the open box to the wide smile on her face. “I don’t get it.”

“Think about it.” She kept her tone patient.

From a distance, she felt a twinkle of amusement, like stepping into the sun on a cloudless day. Lane was enjoying this, clearly. She was surprised he hadn’t wanted to be part of the formal presentation. If you were ever Matched at a party, it was tradition to give the couple a gift representing their – and your – success.

_Newly-Matched couples must give their party hosts two tokens of appreciation as a gesture of gratitude: one small symbol representing their unique connection, and one small heirloom or family gift representing the richness of their new life together._

Ken pulled out the single recipe card from the box, written in Joan’s careful script, as well as the paper tree ornament Lane had found online, after much searching. First, he’d argued that they should have an ornament featuring water, since she had _river-feelings_ and she’d always said his felt like the edge of the ocean. _There ought to be water involved._

_Lane, how’s some poor sap supposed to cut paper to resemble water? Wouldn’t a tree remind you of the beachfront property? Or your woods?_

_You’re mixing your metaphors,_ he’d said primly, and she’d snorted, and shoved him back onto the bed to prove that she could keep them straight when she wanted.

“But it’s not my anniversary,” Ken was still squinting at the box like if he stared at it long enough, it could somehow tell him what he was missing.

“I know,” said Joan, and decided to prompt him again. “Read the card.”

She could tell the second he finally realized it had both her name and Lane's; his eyes bulged out in surprise, and he glanced from the ornament to the recipe card with a choked noise, clearly blown away.

“The richness of—new life,” he finally sputtered. “Holy shit. Okay. Um. Why—why—pastries?”

Joan’s smile widened, remembering countless burned fingers and scorched fruit on the stove and Lane trying to keep his voice as even as possible as he helped her measure out the ingredients with patient, steady hands, their matching wedding rings clouded with flour and making weird indentations in the soft dough.

 _Well,_ _I’m sure this batch will turn out all right._

She felt warm amusement again, and sent Lane back a little _light-prism-wink_.

“It’s the only thing I can bake.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I read one of those "soulmate headcanons" posts on Tumblr a few weeks ago, and saw an idea floated about people who couldn't find their match, and couldn't get married otherwise, so they faked their identifying marks, got married to someone else, and found their real soulmate at a later time.
> 
> Really wanted to write a societal-evolution-of-convention story with that in mind, but I didn't have a clear idea, so filed it away for later. A couple of days ago, this came knocking. Totally unabeta'd, and basically written over a thirty-some hour span, so if it's ridiculous and filled with conflicting info, you know why! (That's not how the soulmate-power works!)
> 
> Title comes from the song _Moon River_ , which is the first thing that popped into my head.


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